Easily View, Convert and Catalog E-Books

E-books are an active part of our life. They allow you to relax by reading your favorite books while sitting in front of the computer. Calibre is a piece of software that does not only allow you to read e-books, but also to catalog them in a quick and easy way. You can create massive book collections in a matter of minutes. Calibre also gives you the option to convert between many e-book formats, like txt, cbz, or others.

Calibre is designed around the logical book concept, so that it can find a single entry in your library that may correspond to actual e-book files. This is a feature that allows for a better search option, and one of the many important features that the application has to offer.

Even if your collection is composed of 60 or 1,000 e-books, you should have no problem when cataloging them. Calibre has a built-in web server that allows you to gain access to your book collection from anywhere in the world, using a simple browser.

The Looks

Calibre has a pretty simple and straightforward interface. If needed, you can also make some quick changes to it. Users can access all the features of Calibre from the main, upper panel. From here, you can create a new library and search a library for books. From the same panel, you can access the book-conversion utility.

The book libraries created by the program can also be accessed by mobile devices, so you can easily consult your Calibre library on your iPhone.

Book information is very easy to add and, if you want to create some special categories for your books, Calibre allows you to do that, and then some. From the main interface, you can add as many books as you want. If you need help when adding books, you can access the tutorial, which is full of pieces of advice and useful information.

A nice thing is that all the important actions are available in the main interface, so you are not forced to open a lot of windows just to access that single feature you need.

When first starting Calibre, you must create a book library. You can do that by letting the application search your computer for recognizable e-book file formats, or by adding them manually. After adding them, you can edit their main meta information, namely the title, genre, publisher, rating, and many more. You can also make some comments on the book, and even download its cover from the Internet. If you feel inspired, you can create custom covers, and use them without any problems.

You can easily search for books in your library. If normal search doesn't do you any good, you can create advanced search queries by clicking the helpful "Advanced search" button to the left of the search bar. One of the most important features of Calibre, besides book cataloging, is book conversion. Calibre can convert between a large variety of e-book file formats. This comes in very handy for people who use many e-book formats.

The conversion process also allows you to make changes to the book and the new format, so that it may suit your needs. Changes can be made to fonts, book structures, size, and almost all important book properties.

Additional changes can be made to the book setup, modifying its look and feel, and also creating a custom table of contents. When testing Calibre, the conversion process went smoothly and did not take up a huge amount of resources.

The software also has a built-in e-book viewer that supports all the major e-book formats. Thus, you can use Calibre not only for cataloging and conversion, but also as an e-book reader.

Calibre comes with a pretty large array of customization options. You can easily customize the user interface, the image formats that you want to use, the conversion options, some advanced core-related options, and also the network server and the news plugin system that comes with Calibre.